Published 5:30 am, Sunday, August 19, 2001

"I read something down in Australia about the LPGA Tour," Timms said. "Instead of spending two pages reporting on the individual performances, they spent two pages debating whether the players should change what they wear."

Appearance over performance. Lifestyles over playing styles. Whether it's talk radio in the East Valley or The New York Times, ABC or the BBC, women athletes say they're not getting a fair portrayal from the male-dominated sports media -- if they get any portrayal at all. "We're second-class citizens. That's the way it's always been," U.S. soccer player Michelle Akers said. "For some people it's just ignorance, for some its sexism, for some it's a power issue. Men have always run the news media and had more input on decision-making, so we don't get the same amount of coverage or the same kind of coverage that male athletes get."

When they do get coverage, female athletes say, it's often not about athletics. Just last week Mercury forward Lisa Harrison announced that she would consider posing nude for Playboy if she is voted the sexiest player in the WNBA on Playboy.com. The ensuing media interest shocked Harrison.

"I think it's really sad that I get all this attention because of possibly being in Playboy as opposed to what I do on the court every day," Harrison said.

University of Southern California sociology and gender studies professor Michael Messner conducted the study, "Gender in Televised Sports," three times during the past 12 years, the last of which was published in 2000. Sampling six weeks of television news coverage in Los Angeles, Messner found that men's sports continue to receive the bulk of air time -- 88.2 percent compared to 8.7 percent for women's sports and 3.1 percent for gender-neutral topics on Los Angeles' three network affiliates -- KABC, KNBC and KCBS.

In addition, men's sports reports (918) outnumbered women's sports stories (160) by a margin of six to one at the Los Angeles stations.

While men's events available for coverage outnumbered women's events over that same time frame, Messner said the ratio of men's-to-women's coverage was still skewed toward men.

Findings were more lopsided on ESPN's SportsCenter. Data from 1999 showed SportsCenter devoted just 2.2 percent of its air time to women's sports, and its stories on male athletes outnumbered those on females by a 15-to-1 margin.

A mere 3 percent of the 251 Los Angeles news programs featured a lead story about women's sports. Not a single SportsCenter program led with a sports story featuring female athletes. Perhaps most disturbing, Messner said, was the preoccupation with sexuality when covering female athletes. Several commentators, he said, made jokes about U.S. soccer player Brandi Chastain's "stripping" down to her sports bra when the U.S. won the World Cup. They also offered "lascivious comments" about tennis player Anna Kournikova's physical appearance.

"Several sports news commentators seemed to believe that an important part of their shows' entertainment value was to engage in sexual voyeurism," Messner said.

According to former San Francisco Chronicle sports writer Jane Gottesman, the news isn't much better for print media. While a reporter at the Chronicle in the early '90s, Gottesman conducted a study of the pictures that ran in the sports section of men and women on a daily basis.

"Mostly, there were no pictures of women so the count was simple," Gottesman writes in her book, "Game Face," which portrays the varied images of female athletes through photographs and interviews. "As I counted, I saw these seemingly inconsequential and repetitious pictures of able-bodied men hitting baseballs, throwing footballs and rebounding basketballs actually had a cumulative effect on the way female athletes saw themselves in relation to males and vice versa."

The effect, Gottesman said, was to teach females they were not as important as male athletes -- not equal. Gottesman said change has come slowly in the years since she left the Chronicle. Studies of magazines and newspapers by professor Margaret Duncan at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee back that assertion.

It may also mean that media need to change the way they look at sports, Messner said.

"It's partly an historical thing about how sports arose in society," Messner said. "Sports arose as a masculine occupation so with regard to athleticism, the association with men has always been clear-cut.

"But when women succeed, it challenges or destabilizes the idea that femininity does not equal athleticism."

Men react to that challenge in different ways, Messner said.

"One way to change your view is to say we were wrong, they can play," he said. "Another way is to say these women who are real athletes aren't real women. When you say that, you smuggle into the equation this notion that athleticism equals masculinity. There's this assumption that these women are somehow masculine or lesbian."

The WNBA and Women's Tennis Association have experienced this problem regularly. "People's obsession with it is a little bit sad," WTA veteran Lindsay Davenport said. "You never hear about the men being gay and you can't tell me there aren't gay men playing sports. You just assume that the man has some model girlfriend somewhere, but with the women, we're automatically lesbians."

"I didn't have those same issues when I played over in Europe. You didn't have someone asking, `Are you a lesbian?' just because you play basketball. You didn't have a title placed on you based solely on your profession," she said.

"Ultimately what we want to be recognized for is our performance. That's what makes these athletes special," she said.

One thing the WNBA has avoided, Ackerman said, is the portrayal of athletes as sexual objects. Other sports have not. Messner said this is how less accomplished athletes can get more attention than their peers.

There are myriad examples. Davenport has won 31 WTA titles. Kournikova zero. Yet Kournikova is the most popular player on the tour because of her looks. Akers was voted the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Player of the Century, the best women's soccer player ever to live, yet it is the photogenic Mia Hamm who gets the most attention and endorsements.

"It doesn't bother me personally that I don't get the attention," Akers said. "What bothers me is when Brandi pulls off her shirt and that's the only image we see. There were a hundred other great plays that went into that win at the World Cup."

While at the Chronicle, Gottesman conducted a study over a one-year period and found that women made the cover of Sports Illustrated just four times -- once for the swimsuit issue. The other three times featured victimized women: Monica Seles after she was stabbed, Mary Pierce because of her troubles with her father and Nancy Kerrigan after she was hit on the knee.

In 29 issues of Sports Illustrated thus far this year, two have featured women on the cover -- the swimsuit issue and a look back at the original Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

McCabe did say the magazine's choice of covers depends on the biggest breaking news of the week and pointed out that Marion Jones' Olympic feats and the Women's World Cup win both made the cover. The World Cup cover was, of course, Chastain with her shirt off.

But Chastain's actions were not deliberately sexual. More vexing for athletes like Akers and Women's Sports Foundation president Julie Foudy is the penchant by some female athletes for using sexuality to their advantage.

Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson posed topless for Sports Illustrated with her hands over her breasts, the Australian soccer team also posed naked and Harrison said she would consider it.

"They work hard for those bodies and they should be proud of them, but sometimes with those nude shots of women I think it reinforces that it's about bodies and sex rather than the entertainment value of sports," said Foudy, also a member of the World Cup winning soccer team. "On the one hand, you can't have women complaining that we're not being taken seriously in the sporting aspect of our lives and then pose for something like this. But then again the people to blame are the ones who feel the necessity to print this."

Despite the potential consequences, some women are unwilling to bear the standard for their gender. Former Arizona State golfer Grace Park caused a stir on the LPGA Tour when she began wearing tight pants and tight shirts that exposed her midriff.

"How I look is not going to be impacted by anybody else. I'm going to go for that look regardless because I like clothes, and I like to look like a girl," Park said. Park is one of a considerable group of women athletes who feel that selling their image will help sell their sport.

But why is coverage a problem in the first place? Newspapers, magazine and broadcast editors say it's because the ratings and attendance aren't there for women's sports. Few in the media accept the notion that it is their role to promote sports.

But Messner says they already do.

"Audiences are broadly prepared and nurtured to be excited about men's sports. They tried to build audiences for something like the XFL and when you get to the NCAA Men's Final Four, audiences have been actively built for that. You're already part of the conversation because we've seen promos, read advances," Messner said. "When you get to something like the Women's Final Four, it kind of just drops into your living room from nowhere, so not as many people are committed to it."

Sports Illustrated's Bailey disagreed.

"To say that media is creating interest in the NCAA tournament is ludicrous. The interest is there already." Bailey said. "No business is doing anything because it's PC or a good idea. It's less about `lets get people interested.' It's `we know they're interested; let's capitalize on it.' "